MBA

Education
&

C
areers
December 2006 28
SPECI ALI SATI ON - OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Travel agent: I can get you three days and two
nights in Rome for a hundred bucks.
Customer: How come so cheap?
Travel Agent: The days are July 11, 12 and 13.
The nights are July 21 and 22.
I
f you are wondering what the travel agent must
have been thinking of while making such a
preposterous offer, then think twice before
writing him off your books. He was simply trying
his best to manage his operations. In fact,
you would have yourself often seen the stewards
and ushers at restaurants trying to manage their
operations more precisely, optimise their
capacity utilization by matching the group-sizes
in which guests arrive to the tables of different
seating capacities. Thankfully, these people do
not go as far overboard as the travel agent and
do ensure that you and your boyfriend sit at the
same table! But wait! Dont let all this talk of
travel agents and restaurant stewards paint a
rather sorry picture about operations management
in your mind, for operations management can in
fact be one of the most exciting and also the most
remunerative of all the various fields of
management, provided youve got the right
aptitude for it.
TQM, JIT, BPR, SCM, SAP, and ERP are all terms
that most of you would have come across in
several business related articles in newspapers
and magazines. You would have also figured out
that these are Ops (Operations Management)
jargon. But what do they really mean, and what is
Operations Management in the first place?
Can I make a career of it? How good a career
choice will it be? What do I need to do to become
an Operations Manager? What is the future of
Operations Management? Read on to find out
the answers to all these questions and more.
Every business, big or small, manufacturing or
service oriented, involves a certain element of
production and delivery of goods or services.
This can, in a certain sense, be looked at as the
core activity of the organisation, which is
supported by various activities such as finance,
marketing, systems, and human resources
management. Operations Management, in its
essence, is all about studying, understanding,
and influencing the way organizations
manufacture and distribute goods and services.
Everything you wear, eat, sit on, use or read comes
to you courtesy of the operations managers who
organized its production and distribution. Even
this very magazine that you are reading, would
have reached you after a series of activities of
production and distribution logistics that are
complex enough to demand expert interference,
appraisal, and control to ensure that they happen
in the right way, at the right cost, and at the right
time.
The relevance of Operations Management was
first realised in its true business sense with the
advent of the Industrial Revolution during the
mid-18
th
century. By the first quarter of the 20
th
century, along with the development of Scientific
Management, Operations Management began to
be given its due recognition as an area
contributing to the bottom line as well as ensuring
Of the many specializations available in management education, very little is known about
Operations Management. In this continuing series, Mr Sunil Kumar K, PGDM (IIM-A), writes
on all you know need to know about this area of specialization.
MBA
Education
&

C
areers
December 2006 29
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
maximum customer satisfaction. It was also
observed that the entire economy would benefit
from the increased productivity and efficiency of
business processes. By the early 1970s, with the
onset of the Quality Revolution, the significance
of Operations Management reached new heights.
Over the past couple of centuries, businesses
have gone from competing on cost to competing
on quality to competing on flexibility. The latest
parameter on which companies are now
competing is speed (or delivery time). Operations
Management is the one area that can deliver this
sort of an edge to companies as they compete.
Shorter product and service life cycles, better
educated and quality-conscious consumers, and
the capabilities of new technology have placed
pressures on the operations function to improve
productivity while providing a broader array of
high-quality products and services. A direct
consequence of this is that some of the highest
paid business consultants in todays globalized
economy are, in fact, from this very field of
management. This should not come as a surprise
to you, since often times, for companies with large
operations, even a small but incisive suggestion
to improve the flow of the operations can help
save costs, improve customer satisfaction, and
add millions of rupees to the bottom line.
Now that we have a broad understanding of
where Operations Management fits in into the
big picture of business and the economy, let us
see what are the kinds of activities that an
operations manager is responsible for. As you
would have figured out by now, operations
managers are concerned with each step in
providing a service or product. They determine
what should go into an operating system such
as equipment, labour, tools, facilities, materials,
energy, and information and how these inputs
can best be obtained and used to satisfy the
requirements of the market place. Managers are
also responsible for critical activities such as
quality management and control, capacity
planning, materials management, purchasing, and
scheduling. More comprehensively, the typical
business decisions addressed by an operations
manger include: What products or services
should be produced? What must be done so they
are produced with high quality and at a good
profit? How much of each product or service
should be produced? What technologies should
a business use? How could information
technology be used to manage an organizations
supply chain? How much inventory should be
held? How should a facility be laid out? How
should schedules be prepared? What process
should be used to provide a service or make a
product? How can quality be built into a product
or service? How should jobs be assigned?
In the light of such a description of
responsibilities, one would logically find that the
key aptitude and skill sets of an operations
manager should be problem-solving skills,
quantitative reasoning skills, ability to play a role
in the efficient and productive operations of an
organization, and knowledge of the use of
analytical tools for the systematic analysis of
organizational processes. Graduates in
Engineering, Mathematics and / or Statistics,
Science, and Information Technology can hope
to excel in this field. Graduates from other streams
also can do equally well as long as they possess
basic problem solving skills and have sufficient
zeal for Ops.
The major principles / concepts covered in any
course that aims at making an operations manager
out of you would be: Principles of Managerial
Economics and Accounting, Statistics,
Operations Planning and Control, Operations
Strategy, and application of Information
Technology. Besides these core concepts, a
considerable exposure to all other areas of
management as Human Resources, Finance, and
Marketing are a must for an integrated and
MBA
Education
&

C
areers
December 2006 30
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
(The author is a member of the
Academic Team at T. .. ..I. .. ..M. .. ..E. .. .. Pvt. Ltd.
)
effective approach to solving business problems
related to operations.
Irrespective of the institute where you pursue
your management education, you could consider
taking up this field of management as a career
as long as you have the basic skill set / aptitude
and the zeal. Of course a management degree
from one of the Top B-Schools like the IIMs will
definitely propel your career into a more
attractive and promising trajectory. Several
post-MBA courses and specialisations, FPMs
from the IIMs and other colleges and higher
studies in colleges, abroad are excellent ways
to move into a higher gear as far as your career
growth is concerned.
Besides Operations Management, which is a
relatively dynamic career involving people,
resources and a variety of management aspects
a relatively more conceptual, scientific and
research oriented area is the area of Operations
Research. This is purely for people with high
aptitude for Mathematics and Statistics, along
with a flair for using complex models and software
for providing theoretical and optimal solutions
for practical and multifarious business problems.
Separate programmes oriented towards this are
offered by a handful of institutes in India, namely
some of the IITs, Indian Statistical Institute
Calcutta, IISc Bangalore, and a few others. An
MS programme in the U.S. in OR / OM would
also be a good bet.
The typical career opportunities for a career in
Ops in India have seen a significant improvement
over the past couple of decades with the arrival
of many MNCs and international business-
consulting firms. The usual entry level activities
that a fresher would look at vary between
forecasting, supervision, purchasing, traffic
management, inventory planning and control,
operations scheduling and control, process
methods and planning, quality management,
warehouse management, and production
planning in diverse industries such as banking,
manufacturing, and retailing.
Career opportunities in Operations Management
can also involve work in management consulting
firms or the development of computer systems
(such as ERP packages) for planning and
scheduling. Careers can be made in service
organizations involved in activities such as
banking, transportation, insurance, and
government, as well as manufacturing firms
involved in producing industrial and consumer
products.
Operations Management titles often used are vice
president of manufacturing, vice president of
operations, vice president of quality, plant
manager, purchasing manager, department
supervisor, computer systems analyst, operations
analyst, inventory control supervisor, facilities
planner, scheduler, first-line supervisor, and buyer.
Typical salaries for entry-level positions in India
can vary anywhere from INR 3 to 10 lakh p.a.
depending on the profile of the candidate and the
B-School he / she is from. After that, the sky is the
limit for Ops managers with proven track records
and work experience, in India and abroad. M & C E